The Tale of The Junipers
by TheHorologium
Summary: Made possible by the compilation of Jaune Arc's many journal entries, the following saga offers you the opportunity to explore the adventures and trials of Team JNPR in their very first year at Beacon Academy.
1. Entry 1: 'Need Sleep'

**Another dash of inspiration, another project...**

**The following is a fiction which takes you into the ongoing journey of Team JNPR, a band of talented friends bound together by fate at Beacon Academy, a school for fighting monsters. **

**The many diary entries of Jaune Arc have been merged to form this unique record of some of JNPR's first year at Beacon, from the perspective of the team leader himself.**

**Enjoy.**

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Dear Journal,

Today has been..._crazy_, to say the very least.

I was woken up this morning real early, like 7:00 AM; Pyrrha brought me breakfast in bed (again?), a huge bowl of wheat flakes. Not that I'm complaining, of course. Anyway, she suggested we go to the rooftop to do some training, since we didn't have classes until eleven o'clock. Well, more like training for _me_...not so much for her.

She's been so nice to me every since day one; it's weird that a four-times Mistral champion wants to bother teaching _me_ the basics. I can't believe it, really, and I don't know what her angle is. I hope I'm not the victim of some super big prank, because it wouldn't be the first time.

But for now, if she's making me suck a little less each day, I'm happy to go along with it.

So yeah, we practiced for a while and I...kinda got my butt kicked a lot. Doesn't matter though, 'cause I got my butt kicked _less than last week_. That's gotta count for something, right?

We had to change into school uniforms pretty quickly once we were finished practicing, and we met up with Nora and Ren to head to classes.

_Nora_...where _are_ you...

I'll get to that, anyway.

Professor Port was giving one of his most stupid lectures EVER today. Something about how he single handedly saved some tiny fishing town in Atlas from a giant Grimm shark or whatever...are _any_ of his weird stories actually true? At least his ridiculous tales mean I don't really have to write much down in Port's classes though...none of us do, really.

Apart from Weiss. She writes down _everything_.

Ah, beautiful snow angel of my dreams...I sat down next to her in class again. She sighed and looked all grumpy but I think she'll come around eventually. Although unfortunately, I have yet to successfully woo my goddess.

My invitation to go see a movie together was turned down in an instant. It's really depressing when she says _no_ so quickly and definitely. She just turned her back to me and started helping Ruby with some diagrams. At least I got to see that offset ponytail and those gorgeous eyes of hers! They make for a nice visual memory. I need something to cheer me up right now, anyway.

Maybe if Pyrrha makes me good enough at combat, Weiss will respect me and...like me back?

Maybe...

Once that class _finally_ finished (it felt like forever), Weiss and Ruby seemed to disappear pretty rapidly. That was pretty demotivating. Anyway, I gathered my team together after class (still can't believe I have my own team!), and we started to head towards the cafeteria, when out of the blue Professor Goodwitch just stopped us, right there in the hallway.

Apparently, it was our turn.

You see, all the first year teams have to achieve certain academic milestones in order to progress to the second year (_yikes_). One of those milestones is that your team has to successfully head into the forest of Forever Fall, _at night time_, and complete a two hour-long scouting run. Team RWBY had done their test a week ago, but they'd had it easy - Blake mentioned how they barely saw any Grimm at all.

I just hoped we'd be as lucky. Goodwitch told us that we would be doing our test tonight, and that we should spend the rest of the day preparing and strategising (whatever that word means). So we all just grabbed snacks from the cafeteria and went straight back to our dorm. Nora decided that it was still considered a 'snack' if she could fit more pancakes onto a single plate.

Yeah, that didn't go well. It was messy.

We spent a long time in our room, just trying to come up with a plan which would keep us alive in Forever Fall for two hours. Pyrrha, me, Nora and Ren, all racking our brains and coming up with different ideas - it was actually pretty fun, looking back (most of Nora's ideas involved 'smashing everything').

If only I'd known...if I'd just planned a little better...

After many hours we finally came up with something which we agreed would keep the team intact. Ren volunteered to be the vanguard of the group - he'd venture ahead stealthily, ensuring that we wouldn't be wandering blindly into a pack of Beowolves or anything. Or at least, he'd give us some warning if we were about to.

I suggested that Pyrrha stay low and move as silently as possible through the bushes and trees at the side of our trail; that way, if something _did_pop out to attack us on our route, she could flank it/them from the side, forcing any Grimm creatures to fight on multiple sides and putting them at a disadvantage.

Ren spoke up and said that I should pair up with Nora, with the two of us walking down the dead centre of the trail - his reasoning was that with Nora's huge offensive ability (i.e smashing anything which wasn't JNPR) and my defensive capability (a.k.a I own a damn shield), we should be able to cover each other well, and that we would function well as the centre of the formation.

I didn't feel great about being the frontline force against the Grimm, but whatever. The plan worked and we'd ran out of time for the planning phase - we were due to be at the starting point in thirty minutes. By that point I was pretty relieved to hear that the test was being supervised by some of the teachers, so we probably wouldn't die.

Probably.

I felt pretty proud, lining up at the start point as a leader, with my teammates by my sides. We were all beginning to feel twitchy and anxious, adrenaline rushing through all of us. I was really damn proud in fact.

"_Begin_" Goodwitch had said, in that chillingly relaxed tone of hers.

We set out into the pitch black forest; within minutes we'd moved far enough away from the start that the moonlight was our only illumination. I was straining my eyes and ears constantly, trying to spot anything that might be a creature of Grimm, or hear anything like a growl or a grunt.

The first thirty minutes went by without a hitch. Nothing ambushed us at all, and by what my Scroll said, we were ahead of schedule - the map indicated that we might finish in just an hour from that point. Another forty minutes on, and we'd only had a few light encounters. Like, we encountered some stray Ursi which Pyrrha and Nora made short work of, and Ren gave us plenty of warning for a couple Boarbatusks which we took down easily. It looked like we were going to finish this test having barely broken a sweat, just like Team RWBY.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

We were only twenty minutes away from the finish point, the exit from the forest - where we would have celebrated and sauntered back to our dorm laughing. That's how it should have been.

Just twenty minutes away...complete and utter mayhem was unleashed.

Ren barely got the warning to us in time before he had to evade and run. An entire _pack_ of Ursi - so many I didn't have a chance to count - emerged from the darkness, seething and furious. Man, I was so scared. I think even Pyrrha was panicking, especially when more Boarbatusks flanked us from the right.

We sprang into action pretty quickly, but our backs were up against the wall from the start.

Nora was making good progress as she cut down the numbers of Ursi, her hammer crunching them again and again - but Ren was really struggling with the Boarbatusks which surrounded him.

Let me tell you, those Boarbatusks might be small but they're worse than any Beowolf. They're so fast and vicious...

Pyrrha and I stepped in to get Ren out of the mess, and for a while, it was working. Me and Pyrrha used all the techniques we'd practiced; I'd block whilst she stabbed, and we'd switch between our roles over and over. All that training we'd done was paying off, and we'd cleaned up the majority of the Grimm which threatened Ren. It looked like we were starting to win; Nora was just about done with the Ursi, having taken them on solo, and Ren had managed to move to a safer area to catch his breath.

Or so he'd thought.

A King Taijitu just sprouted out from _underneath_ the forest floor, caught Ren off guard...and managed to sink one of its fangs into his arm. He didn't scream but you could see the excruciating pain in his face as it bit him. Pyrrha got there the quickest; she thrusted her spear into the creature's eye and I wasn't too far behind, slashing at its neck.

Nora went insane, though. I've never seen her so...fired up.

She finished off the last Ursa with a devastating hit, and just _leapt_ at the Taijitu, firing grenades at it. Me and Pyrrha pulled Ren to safety (luckily he was still hanging in there), whilst two teachers jumped into the fight to control the situation - Goodwitch and Oobleck. They were doing all kinds of crazy attacks, and the King Taijitu was getting beat _hard_. But Nora kept on hitting it, even as the teachers called her to come back. She slammed her hammer into it again and again...she even took out one of its' heads, to everyone's surprise.

The creature was just about dead - facing Nora, Goodwitch and Oobleck all at the same time was far too much for that _thing_ to handle. But it made one last ditch attempt.

It swung its head at Nora - _I can still see it happening in my head in slow motion - _and hit her. Really hard. No fangs or anything, just brute force._  
_

Nora went flying into the darkness, way out into the forest.

Did she survive?

I don't know. Nobody does. She _must_ have...surely.

I'm still in shock about it all; it feels like a lifetime ago, but this all happened a few _hours_ ago. What do I tell my team? My friends? What am I supposed to do as a leader?

How do I make this _okay_?!

I keep visualising it all in my mind, watching it happen over and over. Goodwitch ordered us to run as fast as we could to the endpoint...so Pyrrha carried Ren over her shoulder, and we both sprinted down the trail. We both assumed that they were going to kill that Taijitu, retrieve Nora and bring her back to us. We both thought that in spite of what we'd just been through, that we'd get back as a team, even if beaten and bruised.

But the professors started running backwards _with us_.

I was furious, but I instantly saw why.

The number of Grimm creatures which had emerged from the shadows was terrifying. Silhouettes of nightmarish creatures just...just _everywhere. _I've never been as scared as I was earlier this night. Screeching, howling, thrashing masses of them, amassing on our position as we fled back towards Beacon.

We got back in a matter of minutes, but it felt like a nightmare that wouldn't end. Professor Ozpin and many other teachers had assembled at the endpoint to defeat the Grimm which had chased us, and that wasn't a problem.

The problem was our teammate who was - _is_ - still out there.

It seems so strange of me now, but I was the one who shouted at Goodwitch, Ozpin, Oobleck; any staff member within earshot.

I yelled at them about how Nora was alone in the dark depths of Forever Fall, cold and alone and probably surrounded by Grimm. They kept telling me that it was too dangerous to go back out there, that they'd send a search party out in the morning...not good enough. Nowhere near good enough. So I kept shouting and my voice got evermore painful.

Pyrrha was tending to Ren, who was just slumped on the floor. He was barely conscious as he was taken away to the infirmary. He's still there now, and he'll be there for several days according to the nurses.

I don't know how I'm going to tell him about Nora. And I don't know how he'll take it - hell, I'm angry enough myself.

Pyrrha was the one who stopped me shouting and brought me back to the dorm. She's always got my back. I'm lucky she's on my team - I'm lucky she's my friend.

It's just the two of us here. It's way past midnight.

She's asleep now; at least I think she is. I can't get everything that's happened outta my head, and part of me thinks that Pyrrha can't either, and that she's just pretending to be asleep.

When we got back, we didn't talk. She held my hand; we just sat together in silence and that kinda calmed us both down a little. Not much though.

Because even as I write this, Nora's out there - in the pitch black, surrounded by shadows and monsters. Ren's in intensive care, in a _lot_ of pain...and I'm gonna have to cause him even more pain when me and Pyrrha visit tomorrow, when I explain to him what happened.

Today wasn't just crazy. It was horrible.

I'm tired. I am _so _tired right now. Every muscle and every bone aches.

I need some sleep.

I _need_ sleep.

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**Thank you for reading the first entry! Leave a follow/favourite/review if you wish!**


	2. Entry 2: 'The Agreement'

Dear Journal,

This morning was rough, no doubt about it.

Nora hasn't returned.

I honestly thought that she would have made it back by the time I woke up...

I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and I don't think Pyrrha did either, in all likelihood. There was no surprise breakfast in bed today, no beaming smile to wake up to - so I decided to return the favour for once. I crept out of our room and whipped up some breakfast for her. A glass of orange juice, a big old bowl of Pumpkin Pete's (figured it might make her laugh), and some slices of buttered toast. I kinda burnt the toast though.

(How do I mess up the simplest of things?!)

When I came back she was just barely waking up - and I couldn't help but notice small, damp patches on her pillow. I guess she's taking this harder than I thought, and who can blame her? One of our teammates, one of our _friends_, might be dead right now.

If I'd just made a better plan, or fought harder, or _something_, maybe Nora would be with us instead of...somewhere else.

I was kinda nervous since Pyrrha was only in her nightwear and I didn't wanna seem rude...but I said 'good morning!' in the friendliest tone I could and offered breakfast to her. She smiled politely and thanked me, but I still couldn't ignore her eyes; they were kinda red and a little watery. I think she knew I'd noticed, too.

So we sat down and ate in silence. I didn't what to say or do, as always. She didn't even find the Pumpkin Pete's thing funny. I'm _useless. _What kind of leader am I? Why didn't I cheer her up, or talk about weapons or Mistral or _something_?! I was just too scared as usual. Too frightened to speak in case I made things worse, like I always do.

Useless.

Pyrrha didn't invite me to practice on the rooftops this morning, so I didn't ask. Instead we eventually managed to start up a shaky conversation about the assignment Professor Oobleck had given us. We got dressed and worked together on that for a while. I guess we were both just...trying to pretend it was another normal day. It was anything but.

Around 10:00 AM, Team RWBY knocked on our door.

I guess it's no surprise that they found out about what happened so quickly. They're like our closest friends here at Beacon, after all. Ruby seemed pretty flustered about it all; she and Blake came over to see how I was holding up whilst Yang and Weiss were chatting to Pyrrha. Thing is, there wasn't a lot me or Pyrrha wanted to talk about, or _could_ talk about. Neither of us wanted to go over the events of last night, and as much as Team RWBY tried to convince us Nora will be okay, I didn't wanna hear it. Wishful thinking isn't going to bring her back to us.

Eventually, I asked Ruby if me and Pyrrha could be left alone, especially since we had to break the news to Ren soon. She looked a little hurt but seemed to understand.

She and her team said their goodbyes and made a silent exit; it was just me and Pyrrha again. And we weren't scheduled for any classes today, so neither of us could really put it off anymore. We knew what we had to do.

It was time to go talk to Ren.

Pyrrha led the way to the infirmary without saying a word. To be honest, walking down there felt like marching to my own death. I don't know how many years Ren and Nora have been friends - I just know it's a lot of years.

The infirmary smelt pretty off-putting. Like, the smell of bleach, air freshener and orange juice all mixed together. It gave me a headache the second we walked in there. It took me a few seconds to spot Ren...I'm used to seeing him in green. He was in a hospital gown though - and he looked exhausted. He didn't even notice us approaching until we were a couple feet away.

Pyrrha was the first to speak, asking Ren how he was and if he slept well. He just kinda nodded and smiled.

"So...where's Nora?"

I wasn't prepared for him to ask that question, even though there was no avoiding it. I tried to speak but the sound wouldn't come out. Pyrrha asked to be excused...her eyes were watering and she left the room abruptly. So I sat down next to Ren's bed and started to explain. They were memories I didn't want to revisit, but I owed it to Ren _and_ to Nora to recall what happened, however unpleasant it might be.

First I told him about how courageously Nora fought when he was first injured - how she rushed to his aid and took out a ton of Ursi before she leapt at the King Taijitu. Then I told him about Goodwitch and Oobleck coming to help us...and then, I described the horrifying waves of Grimm which arrived and how we had to flee to survive.

I described how Nora was knocked away into the forest by the Taijitu, and how we were all running away instead of towards her.

Being the team leader is my job. So I tried to offer all this cliché team leader _garbage_; that Nora was a strong huntress, and that she was probably on her way back right now. Truth was, I was just as worried as he was (and I still am). Ren tried to keep his calm, collected composure but...but this time, I could see through it. Just little signs on his face as I was telling him all this, like constant blinking and lip twitching. Signs that made it clear that _none of this is okay_.

Ren was nodding the whole time, he remained stoic - but this was nothing short of tearing him inside out. And it had to be my job to do it. Not Professor Ozpin's, not Professor Goodwitch's or Pyrrha's job, _mine_. That's the experience I get as a team leader.

I really hate this responsibility.

It didn't feel right to stay after I'd talked with Ren; I figured he just wanted everyone and everything to get away from him, even if he didn't say a word. So I left him to his solitude and went to find Pyrrha. It didn't take long, given that she was hidden in a nook halfway down the infirmary hallway. She perked up when I found her...but I can't stand it, really.

The way we hide how we're feeling and pretend everything's just dandy and normal. I really wish that we could just be more honest with each other, instead of always disguising ourselves. I feel like I barely know Pyrrha at the moment because we're just lying to ourselves and to each other.

My team is breaking apart at the seams and I'm so powerless to do anything about it! Why did Ozpin give _me_ this role?!

At least Pyrrha and I got to chat in the evening before bed. She spent the entire afternoon sparring with other students, whilst I just walked around the Academy for hours on end. We both have our differing ways of taking our minds off things, I guess. Anyway, we came to an agreement...although I'm starting to regret saying 'yes' to the idea.

If Nora isn't back by tomorrow night, me and Pyrrha are going out into Forever Fall to find her.

I'm terrified, really, because I have a bad hunch that Nora ain't gonna be back and we're going to have to go out there...without Ren's help. I mean, Pyrrha's an amazing fighter but me? I'm a _rookie_, let's face it. And let's be serious, how many Grimm can the two of us take out? What if we get swarmed in an ambush by Nevermores and Deathstalkers?

What chance do we even _have_ of finding Nora?

My head is still spinning from all of this. Pyrrha decided to get to sleep early, and I reckon it's because she wants to be fully prepared for if (more like _when_) we venture out there. Not that some extra rest will make a difference if we end up surrounded by Ursi...although, I've just had a thought.

Should we ask for Team RWBY's help...? They'd certainly give us the firepower and talent we need to survive...maybe long enough to find Nora...

No.

That's an awful idea. I can't drag any more friends into that damned forest.

I can't lose any more people the way we - the way _I_ lost Nora.

Goodnight, Journal.


End file.
